Employability Skills Required by Entry-Level Engineers in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Entry-level engineers mostly get opportunities to join private sector organisations at the initial stages of their careers. Hence, they should be equipped with a set of competencies and skills required by the industry. This study aims to identify the employability skills expected by leading employer engineers in Sri Lanka from entry-level engineers. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were held with purposefully selected 22 senior engineers who worked as Managing Directors (MD)/Chief Executive Officers (CEO) of the private sector engineering firms. Audio recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed employing the inductive thematic analysis method. As per the analysis, major themes like soft skills, technical knowledge, personality traits, ethics, values in life and extra-curricular activities were identified as employability skills expected by leading employer engineers from an ideal fresh engineering graduate to offer an engineering job in Sri Lanka. The findings of this study are highly beneficial for engineering undergraduates to adopt, as well as their teachers to teach the required competencies to students to satisfy the industry expectations of the private sector.